merefaith: discipleship in the ruins of empire

A couple of recent experiences have led me to this post in which I reflect on the influence, or lack thereof, that Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas has had on my own theological development. On his own blog a friend of mine reproduced one theologian's parabolic critique of Hauerwas after I commented on his statements concerning Anabaptist theology in a previous post. I understood this as an apparent attempt to "bait" me into further discussion and while I could be wrong he hasn't yet disputed my read on it. The assumption behind my friend's post, as I see it, is that Hauerwas is a critical, perhaps central figure in my formation as a Radical Reformation sort of Christian.

Labels: Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Friday, January 29, 2010 | Permalink | Comments

Just like last year, I will be preaching on the fourth Sunday of Advent. The gospel text for Year C is Mary's Magnificat. In this wonderful New Testament psalm, bearing echoes of Hannah and her namesake Miriam, Mary praises the mercies of a God who has looked with favor on both his humble servant and his long-suffering people in conceiving the anointed king and savior. All generations will call her blessed; the hungry will be filled. As a member of Israel's "poor ones," Mary rejoices in the long-awaited deliverance of the oppressed and downtrodden. The wealthy and arrogant who oppose God in their injustice will be, in fact, have already been dismayed by the in-breaking of YHWH's rulership.

Labels: Liturgy, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Tuesday, December 01, 2009 | Permalink | Comments

My friend Jacob's question given in his comment to my previous post is a good and worthy one. What kind of authority would the ecumenical councils (and, perhaps most importantly, the creeds they produced: Nicene, Chalcedonian) have in the baptistic paradigm of congregationalism?

It might seem at the outset that the creeds would be given no validity in such an ecclesiology. First, there is the fear that they take away from the authority of Scripture. Second, they are often interpreted as having been imposed upon the early church by emperor and bishop and thus might be forced upon churches as alien "litmus tests" today. Third, the introduction of an external creed may be understood as a violation of the rights and responsibility of each congregation to discern the mind of Christ in their own context.

I will examine these potential objections in reverse order. The final charge against creeds reflects an assumption that congregational authority is properly understood as congregational independence and "autonomy." While "local church autonomy" is often labeled a "Baptist distinctive" in our day and age, in truth Baptists have largely believed that each church is also answerable to the the larger association and assemblies for guidance, correction, and mutual admonition. For example, the 1644 London Confession declared that, although each congregation is a distinct body, "yet are they all to walk by one and the same Rule, and by all means convenient to have the counsel and help one of another in all needful affairs of the Church, as members of one body in the common faith." Or, as Nigel Wright of Spurgeon's College puts it in his book Free Church, Free State: The Positive Baptist Vision, a congregation's prerogatives do not include redefining the essential Christian faith. The Baptist vision is not properly marked by an "anything goes" or "I'm ok, you're ok" attitude; nevertheless, it is defined by a belief that congregations sincerely seeking the mind of Christ, internally and externally, will move toward a unity that is not coerced or imposed, as Yoder states. Part of that movement toward unity includes the recognition that the faith taught and lived by a particular church is also the faith defined and symbolized in such a statement as the Nicene Creed.

Moving to the second objection, we see that this is in fact, historically, the way the creeds were received. As Baptist patristics scholar D.H. Williams says, "Credal statements had to represent the common mind of the church or else they would not be accepted and employed by the wider body of believing Christians" (Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism, 155f.). We look at Nicea as a watershed moment but it took decades for the formula drawn up by the bishops to become accepted. D.H. Williams again:

Even the epithet "ecumenical" was assigned to the Council of Nicaea, in the
sense of being a special and definitive category of synod, only gradually.
The problem of the "fall" paradigm with regard to Nicaea is that it exaggerates
the centrality of the council's position in history, even though little
acknowledgment owas made of its creed for roughly thirty years. Evidently,
it was not at all clear to the majority of bishops after the council that the
Nicene Creed was the best articulation of the Christian doctrine of God (162).

Indeed, the creed remained controversial and alternatives were presented during the next quarter-century. Most churches continued to prefer their own local, pre-existing creeds for baptismal interrogations. Only in the mid-350s did the Nicene Creed start to emerge as the singular orthodox standard. Even then it continued to be opposed. The Council of Ariminum (359), the largest so far in the west, rejected the Nicene Creed and put forth a substitute. Over time, however, Nicea was "proven and internalized by the life experience of the churches (Williams, 163)." Even in Orthodox literature I have seen the point made that a creed or ecumenical council decision is only truly thus once approved by the faithful. In other words, the authority of creed and council is something tested, discerned, and then either received or rejected...by local gatherings of believers seeking the mind and will of Christ. D.H. Williams concludes his chapter on councils and creeds by noting, contra Vatican II, that the early church did not view councils as infallible or as oracles of divine revelation.

Finally, the creeds are properly understood as derivative of Scripture, marking out the space in which interpretations are understood as faithful and excluding interpretations that make Scripture incoherent. The most controversial element of the Nicene Creed's formulation, homoousios, was controversial precisely because it was not Scriptural language, and it took Athanasius' persuasive argumentation to show that it cohered with biblical testimony. As the history of drawing up confessions of faith shows, Baptists are not averse to making claims about what they believe are the sensible and valid interpretations of faith to be proclaimed and to which assent is encouraged.

So how have Baptists interpreted the theological value of the creeds and councils? It must be admitted that there is a mixed history. However, it is clear that the "no creed but the Bible" claim is derivative of the Stone-Campbell movement in the southern United States and not an original Baptist principle. The early General Baptist leader Thomas Grantham declared that the Nicene, Chalcedonian and Athanasian creeds should be received and believed by all, and this was also the conclusion of the Generals' Orthodox Creed of 1678. At the first meeting of the Baptist World Alliance in 1905, Alexander MacLaren asked, as the first order of business, that all delegates stand and recite the Apostles' Creed as an affirmation of their shared faith with the church catholic. The delegates could recite the creed from memory (a feat not repeated at the centennial celebration in 2005, in which a projector was required!).

Baptistic theological writings have, to various degrees, stressed the validity of the creeds and councils. D.H. Williams finds engagement with the historic tradition necessary and unavoidable but cautions against labeling the patristic creeds as "inerrant" (Evangelicals and Tradition, 78). James McClendon reiterates that creeds have no status as supplemental authorities, but "they may briefly witness to the truth that is more fully witnessed in Scripture. And, indeed, according to their authors, that was the point fo the early creeds; their makers always understood them as guides to the reading of Scripture" (Doctrine, 470). Creeds are "monuments of tradition" that tell us how Scripture has been read and "invite us to read it that way if we can" (471). The most overtly positive assessment of the creeds perhaps comes from Stephen Holmes in his book Listening to teh Past: The Place of Tradition in Theology. He surveys potential methods for rejecting the Nicene Creed but, pointing to the strong consensus of the universal Church over space and time, concludes, "I find it difficult to envisage a situation in which there could be sufficient evidence to doubt the Nicene Creed" (161). What Holmes is doing, I conceive, is extending the logic of trust in Christ's Lordship and the Spirit's guidance outward from the local congregation and into the Church as the whole Body of Christ. Proper discernment of the mind of Christ entails recognizing the authority of the entire community of saints. Finally, this is the point and title of a chapter in Steven Harmon's book Towards Baptist Catholicity. It would take much time to reproduce it here, but this chapter, "The Authority of the Community (of All the Saints): Towards a Postmodern Baptist Hermeneutic of Tradition," is an extended examination of how the Baptist understanding of the derivative authority of a church as covenant community opens the way toward recognizing the derivative authority of the entire communio sanctorum in interpreting the convictions and duties of the Christian faith.

So what kind of authority do the ecumenical councils have? The same kind of authority as that of a local church meeting, a synod, a general assembly, or a convention. The councils have moral and hermeneutical authority by virtue of the fact that they were gatherings of Christians, intentionally brought together in prayer and worship, that sought to discern what the Spirit says to the churches. It is an authority of testimony that is then weighed, tested, and deliberated over by each church. With Holmes and Harmon I would argue that the Nicene Creed, for example, has been so heavily tested and affirmed as to place an enormously strong burden of proof on the church that chooses to reject it. With the entire Baptist tradition and with Yoder, meanwhile, I contend that the acceptance of councils and creeds must be a process of mutual recognition and affirmation in which nothing is coerced or imposed, but rather that churches in sincere and genuine discernment come to realize that they faith they seek to live and teach is one and the same with the faith presented by another deliberative body that has previously placed itself under Christ's Lordship. We are responsible for each other but we must not lord it over each other. I believe that the way forward must live in that balance.

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Historia, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Thursday, November 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comments

On the web site for The Anabaptist Network in the UK and Ireland there appears an article by Keith Jones, rector of IBTS, on the Anabaptist-style practice of communion at Sarka Valley Community Church. Here one finds, I believe, a Free Church convictional catholicity - that is, devotion to both the great Tradition of the Church universal as well as the key principles and practices of a particular spiritual tradition within that Church.

Then the Pledge of Love is shared, either using the Hubmaier text, or some
other, or some contemporary form of the Pax. The table is set with a simple
single loaf made by one of the members. The wine comes from the vineyards around
Mikulov, Moravia, where once Hubmaier’s Anabaptist community enjoyed a peaceful
existence. The simple pottery chalice made in Bohemia reminding us of the
Anabaptist skills in Haban pottery, such a feature of central Europe and
entirely appropriate in the land of the Hussite proto-reformation, which
restored the cup to the people.

The classic prayer of thanksgiving rehearses in narrative style,
suiting the contemporary gathering church accent on narrative theology, the
mighty acts of God in creation and then in the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus. Again, this reflects the Anabaptist desire to see Scripture and faith
through the Gospel narrative of the life of Christ, focusing on the Sermon on
the Mount. A sharp contrast to the liturgies and prayers of the Catholic and
Magisterial Protestant traditions, which focus almost exclusively on the death
of Jesus. Then the bread is fractured and sisters and brothers pass the bread
round the circle breaking off a piece as they offer it to the next person. Some
keep the bread and dip it in the chalice (intinction). Others eat as they
receive, then drink the rich Moravian Frankovka wine.

When all have served each other, the cup and bread are placed back on
the table. Short prayers of thanksgiving are offered. Perhaps a hymn, or song,
or Taizé chant are sung. Then the community is dismissed in mission. Many
attending this celebration from beyond this particular gathering community have
found the simplicity and spirituality of the occasion highly moving. The
architectural setting is simple, though seasonal banners, the tablecloth and
napkins changing colour depending on the Christian year, add a holistic
dimension helping to emphasis that worship is to engage all the senses.

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Liturgy, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Saturday, August 22, 2009 | Permalink | Comments

Ellen Davis, Old Testament professor at Duke, is going to tell me why I should go live on a farm....

...okay, maybe not quite. But she is going to confirm my bias toward renewing a closer relationship with the land (in my case, beefing up my garden!), supporting local agriculture and economy, increasingly avoiding the mess that is industrial agriculture, and finding grounds for it all in the Bible to boot. Green acres is the place to be - i'chaim!

Labels: Biblical and Historical Studies, Discipleship, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Saturday, January 24, 2009 | Permalink | Comments

Pictured: Rev. Malkhaz Songulashvili, the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, follows the cross in the Baptist-led ecumenical procession on Good Friday, 2007.

Readers of this blog remember the praise I have given to the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, a tiny Baptist community that has nevertheless managed to exercise remarkable influence and moral authority in an officially Eastern Orthodox post-Soviet country. I am not the only young theology student in America who has acknowledged and sought to reflect on their experience. In fact, a Duke Divinity grad (now Catholic University of America doctoral candidate), Ben Boswell, recently wrote two articles about the EBCG for the journal Religion in Eastern Europe. For his thesis, Ben draws a parallel between the organizing efforts of the student-led democratic movement Kmara and the corporate life of the Georgian Baptists. Each group, a "radical" force in its society, played an effective role in the 2003 "Rose Revolution" precisely because each practiced its own liturgy, a "revolutionary" or looping-back movement that sustained identity and provided the impetus for engagement with society. Boswell writes:

[T]he EBCG’s ability, as a monastic movement within the Orthodox Church, to recover a democratic polity in the form of a Free Church ecclesiology, was the most significant reform that enabled their successful participation in the non-violent revolution for democracy in Georgia. In their intentional recovery of a Free Church ecclesiology the EBCG refused to abandon the Orthodox liturgical resources that had enriched their worship since the fourth century. Radical Reformed, Free Church ecclesiology, coupled with the ancient liturgical resources of the Orthodox Church, provided the EBCG with an impetus for a revolution in their social relationships and the practical and spiritual foundation to sustain them.

The Georgian Baptists' radical liturgy has taken various forms. As Boswell notes, it has included the adoption of native Orthodox practices of worship and spirituality so that their proclamation of the gospel is contextualized within the broad tradition of the church Catholic and the cultural history of Georgia as well. While the appropriation of tradition is understood as a positive good in its own right, it has helped the Baptists in Georgia because a) they disabuse themselves of the charge that they are a novel "sect" with no respect for the Church of ages past and b) they send a signal that they are committed to being a part of the Church of Georgia and for the Georgian people.

The liturgy has been radical in swinging open doors towards diversity and wide participation. Despite the typically fundamentalist climate of the Eastern European Baptist churches, the EBCG ordains women deacons and pastors. While some churches have adopted the liturgical reforms that bring their worship closer towards the Orthodox, there is no demand for uniformity and congregations are free to construct their liturgies as befit their needs under Christ's Lordship. Although Georgia is riven by ethnic tensions, the Baptist Cathedral in Tbilisi maintains four separate congregations based on language: Georgian, Russian, Armenian and Ossetian. The Baptists have taken seriously Christ's call to minister all people. When Chechen Muslims fled across the border into Georgia, Bishop Malkhaz and other members of the EBCG took a wheeled "mobile Eucharistic table" to the mountain hinterland so that they could feed the refugees and share in table fellowship:

Moved by this act of hospitality one Muslim imam remarked, “When I return to Grozny I will do two things. I will build a new mosque because ours was destroyed by the Russians, and I will build a Baptist church because the Baptists were the only people with us in our time of need.”

Finally, the Baptists have practiced a radical liturgy of ecumenical cooperation and brotherhood. For several years they have organized and led a procession of the cross on Good Friday in which all Christians are invited to participate. The procession begins at the Armenian Apostolic cathedral, moves to the Roman Catholic cathedral, the Lutheran cathedral, and then finishes at the Baptist cathedral. Bishop Malkhaz also aided Christian unity when he led the EBCG to respond to the terrorism of a rogue Orthodox priest with love. Once the priest, Basil Mkalashvili, was apprehended and tried, the bishop made the dramatic gesture of calling for his release and crossing the courtroom to shake the defrocked priest's hand in a gesture of forgiveness. While the court still sentenced the priest, he and Malkhaz continue to exchange letters regularly.

When the revolution for democracy came in 2003, Baptists were active and visible participants in the demonstrations:

During the days of the Rose Revolution, Baptists were actively protesting alongside opposition party leaders and even extended hospitality by bringing hot drinks and food to the demonstrators during the cold and rainy hours of the revolution.10 Alongside the Georgian flags (a neo-medieval flag with five blood red crosses) flown by Saakashvili and opposition leaders in Tbilisi Freedom Square flew the flag of the EBCG, which was designed with an ancient cross from monastic cave paintings found in the Georgian desert. The Baptist flags provided the only visible religious presence of any kind during the revolutionary democratic movement. When demonstrators armed with roses non-violently stormed the Presidential office building during the illegitimate Parliamentary session, a Baptist named Lela Karvelishvili, who worked forthe Liberty Institute, carried the Baptist flag into Shevardnadze’s office as a religious symbol of revolutionary power.

It is Boswell's contention that the intentional construction of a Free Church-Orthodox liturgy by the Baptists gave them the revolutionary character that has allowed them to participate in nonviolent revolution and share an active, compassionate love for the enemy and the other. As Free Church Christians they inherit and uphold a tradition of principled dissent and a commitment to what John Howard Yoder described as an ecclesiology of dialogical reciprocity, which his Anabaptist tradition had dubbed "the rule of Paul." In this church practice openness towards the gifts and voices of all is cultivated and cherished. The EBCG has externalized this process by making itself open to the gifts and insights of other Christians and of democratic movements like Kmara. The result has been a unique form of "radical catholicity" that engages the wider Church and the wider society in pursuit of fuller obedience to the gospel of JEsus Christ. Boswell writes:

To the extent that the EBCG was able to incorporate the deep liturgical resources of the Orthodox tradition within their own Free Church polity, they embodied the most radical form of the “rule of Paul,” in that they were open not only to hearing the voice of the other, of the enemy, but they were open to learning from and embodying the best of their interlocutors practices into their own liturgies as a sign of reconciliation and revolutionary dialogical reciprocity.

The result has been an inspired liturgy, a true "work of the people" that has shaped the EBCG into a vibrant expression of radical and catholic Christianity, committed both to the crucial demands of discipleship and to the beauty and unity of the faith as it has been shared across time and space. I pray that Baptists and all other Christians in America will attend to their example and consider how our liturgies - that is, our life together in proclamation and praise - will in fact shape us to be revolutionaries who continually "loop back" upon the Gospel to order ourselves afresh.

Labels: Baptists, Ecumenism, Liturgy, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Saturday, May 03, 2008 | Permalink | Comments

This is what I wrote for Amazon.com (4 stars):

Steve Harmon has taken a great leap forward in his bold appropriation of the tradition of the Church universal as an integral resource for renewal in Baptist churches. He shows how Baptists might conceive of a derivative authority for tradition while maintaining the primacy of Scripture, highlights our implicit allegiance to Nicaea and Chalcedon in our confessions, and offers Protestant/evangelical paradigms for ressourcement by way of engagement with the early church fathers and mothers. Harmon shows that tradition does not eliminate dissent - a cherished Baptist practice! - but rather sets the boundaries within which dissent is actually a constructive task.

This reviewer is ever thankful for this recent work by Harmon as well as the writings of Philip Thompson, Elizabeth Newman, Curtis Freeman, John Colwell, Paul Fiddes, D.H. Williams, Timothy George, and others. These current voices in Baptist theology and historiography demonstrate that one doesn't need to swim the Tiber or Bosporus to feel at home in the grand current of Christianity throughout the ages. More immediately, they provide insights into Baptist identity which transcend the stale and shop-worn divide between "biblical conservatives" and "freedom-loving moderates." It's time to move on!

So why not five stars? This is an important book, but because of the sophisticated style of writing it may be fairly inaccessible to many Baptists, both laity and pastors. I believe that its fruits would require a lot of "translation" to be applied in most local churches, especially since the typical theological dialect for Baptists is very different from that of persons and communities which explicitly value little-c catholicity. That being said, Harmon's chapter on corporate worship is very accessible and can be reproduced for church committees considering how they may incorporate practices that would enrich Sunday morning.

It is my hope that more and more Baptists will read this book and take it seriously, and that more and more Christians in the "traditional" communions will read it and take US seriously as well!

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Ecumenism, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, February 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments

In worship we discover that we are engrafted into the story of God. It is in worship that we acquire the skills to recognize who we are - sinners. In Trinitarian worship, we also acquire the skills to discover and live our identity as priests, an identity centered in blessing and offering, or receiving and giving. We receive the forgiving and sacrificial love of Christ, and are enabled to extend this to others through intercession and service. Paul Fiddes describes this ecclesial identity well when he states that the church as a priestly people has the 'power to serve, to focus the presence of the Spirit and to mediate blessing only because it is caught up in the life of the triune God'. To be caught up in the life of God is most certainly a gift of God's grace, one mediated to us through the material Body of Christ. With Schmemann, we need to emphasize that in the church the sum is greater than the parts, not because of human effort but because of the presence of the risen Christ who freely uses 'the created order in the work of redemption, particularly the gathering and building of the church'. The priesthood of all believers is not an internal, spiritual phenomenon, but an ecclesial form of life, sustained by the faithful worship of God.

- Elizabeth Newman, "The Priesthood of All Believers and the Necessity of the Church," in Recycling the Past or Researching History?: Studies in Baptist Historiography and Myths. Anthony R. Cross and Philip E. Thompson, eds. Carlisle: Paternoster, 2005. Final italics mine.

Labels: Baptists, Discipleship, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Wednesday, October 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

I am a happy Baptist now and very accepting of the love-hate relationship with my tradition that surely every faithful Christian has with his or hers. But when I began divinity school I was not a happy Baptist, for I arrived a wounded veteran of a recent round of the Southern Baptist holy war as it played out in the affairs of my college. I was sickened by the tactics of the ultraconservatives and I could not go back to their highly sectarian, insular form of the faith. But I was not comfortable either with my allies among the moderates, who all too often prized individual freedom above faithfulness to historic Christianity.

Increasingly attracted by traditional liturgy, ancient practices, and creedal stability, it seemed I was on the fast track to some other ecclesial home. And for a while I was, and contemplated Eastern Orthodoxy for a time. However, I stepped back from the leap, deciding that I still had so much to learn in my theological education. Now I am not only content but eager as a Baptist, and sometimes I almost revel in confounding my Anglican and Methodist friends at Duke when I do things that are supposedly "un-Baptist."

Not all my friends have reaffirmed their Christian commitment within the Baptist fold in the wake of my college's civil war. Some who were on the edges of the faith have left it behind entirely. Others who have been dedicated disciples of Jesus Christ for some time have chosen to switch to traditions that appear more amenable to a stable, balanced orthodoxy - either Anglicanism or, in the case of one friend, Eastern Orthodoxy. Now a catechumen, he has for some time been puzzled why I not only stopped in my tracks when it seemed I was running in the same direction, but also turned back around. We have decided to dialogue on some key issues, the first of which being apostolic succession. Originally this enterprise was conducted on the student advocacy web site for my college, but now it has apparently been attacked and deleted. So we will renew our conversation on our blogs. Therefore I present to you my opening statement to Paul as to why I do not accept the traditional doctrine of apostolic succession.

*****

Perhaps we need to begin with a definition of apostolic succession. For what I will be critiquing is neither a) the notion that the apostles may have appointed leaders to serve in the church – this is quite simply a sensible move to keep a community going; nor b) the notion that a visible succession or continuity in church leadership is a helpful sign, or indeed perhaps an aid, in the unity of the Church and the preservation of its teaching. Rather, what I do reject is the more robust doctrine summed up by Kallistos Ware as follows:

All bishops share equally in the apostolic succession, all have the same sacramental powers, all are divinely appointed teachers of the faith.

• Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church. London: Penguin Books, revised 1997.

Or, as he explicates further on in his book, that the bishop receives a special charisma from the Holy Spirit that enables him to act as teacher/imparter of the faith, that validates him for celebration of the Eucharist, and that makes him “the fountain of all the sacraments” (Ware, 249). Adding to Ware's description, I note that the doctrine of apostolic succession through the bishops as successors of the apostles is seen as a necessary sign without which one has no guarantee of being Church. Or, as Ware says, “Without the bishops there can be no Orthodox people...” (Ware, 250). My working definition of classical AS (I will simply refer to the doctrine by these initials from now one) is thus as follows: that the apostles ordained bishops through the laying on of hands to impart a special gift of the Holy Spirit and thus made them valid successors. The Church only properly exists where people gather around these duly-ordained successors to receive instruction, the sacraments, and ordination to the other two orders of ministry – the priesthood and the diaconate. Schismation from this orderly succession of bishops means to be cast out of the visible unity of the Church, the ark of salvation.

Like you at present, I used to find this vision compelling. In some respects, it's neat and clean and allows a ready answer to the difficult question of where one may find the Church. It has a certain sensible appeal – why wouldn't such a succession be set up to guarantee the visible unity and legitimacy of church fellowships? And the very audacity of Orthodox claims can be quite hypnotic: surely such a strident conviction would have deep roots and overwhelming historical evidence in order to be made. And indeed AS does have quite a historical resume, but now I believe that this is made possible only by a superficial reading of history. I reject the claim of AS now because of New Testament and historical counter-evidence, gaps and discrepancies in the historical record, and the movement in ecumenical theology away from AS, classically defined, as belonging to the esse of Church.

1. The New Testament

First of all, biblical scholarship has known for decades that there is no one ecclesiology that characterizes all the writings that make up the New Testament; rather, there are several ecclesiologies that stand in tension with one another due to their competing emphases and conceptions of the community that gathers around the teaching of Jesus. Is the Church primarily a community of mutual discipline tempered by a hermeneutic of mercy? Then your ecclesiology is heavily dependent on Matthew. Is it a charismatic fellowship that follows trails blazed by the freedom of the Spirit? Then your ecclesiology relies on Luke-Acts. Or is it an orderly institution safeguarded in sound doctrine by clearly-defined offices of authority? Then your ecclesiology draws from the testimony of the Pastorals.

The remarkable (although I think not overwhelming) diversity of the biblical witness thus throws up a big question mark against any attempt to promote a univocal, normative teaching on church structure and authority. Should the church be governed congregationally, so that every member has an equal voice in decisions? Then a key text is I Corinthians 14:26. Or is the “biblical pattern” the entrusting of authority to a representative body of respected elders? You find your evidence in 1 Timothy 5:17.

Raymond Brown, the great North American Catholic New Testament scholar of the 20^th century, wrote a little book called The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (Multnomah, NY: Paulist Press, 1984) with the purpose of analyzing and presenting the different ecclesiologies in the New Testament that were provided as answers to how the Church may survive and function after the death of its first generation. Brown writes:

I approached a number of NT books looking for an answer, explicit or implicit, to a specific problem, namely: What were Christians in the Sub-Apostolic Period (the last one-third of the first century) being told that would enable their respective churches to survive the passing of the authoritative apostolic generation? There was no evidence in these works that a consistent or uniform ecclesiology had emerged. Rather, writings addressed to different NT communities had quite diverse emphases. (164)

Brown goes on to note that ultraconservatives of one sort reject this diversity in the NT in order to uphold a certain view of Scriptural inspiration, while ultraconservatives of another sort reject it out of a belief that Jesus planned the Church, the apostles were of one mind carrying out his orders, and only troublemakers differed concerning this plan.

This diversity thus stands in judgment over any bold claim that classical AS was instituted as the foundation of the Church from the very beginning, such that no fellowship was not recognized as a genuinely Christian community without an ordained successor of the apostles (through the laying on of hands) present.

In fact, a number of NT texts call this reading of the Church's origins into question, if not outright deny it. Two stories in Acts in particular have jumped out at me for their distinct lack of reference to AS where one would think it is necessary. In the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, Philip explains the meaning of Scripture and the gospel of Jesus and the eunuch asks to be baptized. In verse 39, when they come up out of the water, the Spirit snatches Philip away so that the eunuch sees him no more, and then the eunuch goes on his way rejoicing. Presumably, the eunuch will return to Ethiopia and proclaim his newfound faith and worship Jesus as Messiah and Lord. But if he is indeed to worship and evangelize and extend the Church in his homeland, why did Philip not lay his hands on him and ordain him? It may be said claimed that Philip is only a deacon (although Acts 6 never specifies an “office” to which the seven Hellenists are appointed) but that still leaves the problem intact for classical AS: the eunuch departs to spread the faith in Ethiopia but lacks a “valid” succession.

Consider also the spread of the faith to Antioch in Acts 11:19-30. Barnabas, an assistant to the apostles who has no specified “office” in Acts, is dispatched by them from Jerusalem to investigate the outbreak of messianic belief. According to the passage, Hellenist Jewish-Christians scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen's death begin to tell the gospel to Greeks, leading to a great response. When news reaches Jerusalem, the mother church sends Barnabas, who encourages the new disciples, but who never, according to the text, lays hands on people to appoint presbyters or bishops to order church life, administer the sacraments, and ensure “valid” succession.

So the author of Luke-Acts depicts a Church dependent on the Spirit's guidance for its fundamental existence but not on a hierarchy in which the necessary community-ordering charism is handed down by an ordination rite. The same appears to be the case in some of the writings of Paul, particularly the Corinthian correspondence. He does speak of those appointed by God to be apostles and teachers, alongside other functions, in 1 Corinthians 12:27-31. Yet in his whole appeal to the factious Corinthians, I believe it is quite illuminating that he never calls them to obey an appointed bishop or presbyters set up by succession (as Ignatius repeatedly does half a century later to churches that are not even facing such turmoil). His letter is addressed to the church in Corinth (1:2) and not to a bishop at Corinth or body of elders. One would think that in a crisis such as this he should address officers appointed by his hand to provide sacramental efficacy and sound teaching, and yet he doesn't. Why, if from the beginning all Christian churches were ordered according to AS and why, if the bishop validates the community and is necessary for its rites and practices (as Ignatius states in Smyrnaeans) does Paul not call upon a bishop at Corinth to exercise Eucharistic discipline so that one social class does not binge at the Lord's Supper while another goes hungry (1 Corinthians 11:17-33)? It appears that Paul, the divinely appointed apostle to the Gentiles, does not have a developed or precise view of leadership in the church (cf. Andrew Chester, “The Pauline Communities,” in Markus Bockmuehl and Michael B. Thompson, eds. A Vision for the Church: Studies in Early Christian Ecclesiology. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997).

2. Historical Gaps and Discrepancies

From the second century on, various Christian communities began to produce succession lists to validate their origins in the apostolic band. However, certain discrepancies plague these lists as various traditions contradict one another over the origin of a particular line. For example, Ignatius of Antioch is variously attributed as ordained directly by Paul (Theodoret, 393-457; [i]Dialogues I – The Immutable[/i]), directly by Peter (Apostolic Constitutions; late 4^th century; vii.46), or as second in line as bishop after Evodius ( Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History; iii.22). In the case of Clement, “bishop” of Rome, Irenaeus claims, incorrectly, that Peter and Paul founded the church at Rome (Against Heresies 3.3.2-3) and that Clement was the third bishop in line. Tertullian, meanwhile, asserts that Clement was appointed directly by Peter (Proscription against Heretics 32). Rome, however, did not have a monarchical episcopate at the time of Clement and so Irenaeus is anachronistically applying such a church structure. 1 Clement 4:2 only distinguishes between the presbyters and the laity, and the titles “bishop” and “presbyter” are used interchangeably throughout the letter (see 42:4, 44:4-5, 52:4).

Carlos Alfredo Steger, in his doctoral dissertation “ Apostolic Succession in the Writings of Yves Congar and Oscar Cullman” (Andrews University Seminary Doctoral Dissertation Series Volume 20. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews U Press, 1993), cites various figures for whom AS is a traditionally valid concept as noting the vacuum of real data concerning church structure and governance between the end of the first century and the emergence of the doctrine in Irenaeus in the late second century. Church of England bishop Charles Gore notes how “church history passes through a tunnel” and Anglican liturgical scholar Dom Gregory Dix notes a “gap in the evidence, which confronts all theories alike” (16). At the other end of the tunnel emerges Irenaeus' contra-Gnostic argument that the catholic Church has preserved the true teaching of the apostles by means of a succession that ensures the gift of truth (cf. AH 4.26.2). Even here Irenaeus does not fully describe the doctrine of AS as it comes to be sacramentally and hierarchically conceived in its most robust form – the succession is primarily to preserve pure teaching, which is done by means of a succession of presbyters alongside the episcopate (AH 3.2.2). For both Irenaeus and his near-contemporary Tertullian, what is important is the handing down of the faith, not a sacramental conferral of power via ordination (Steger 18). The notion of the charism wedded to the succession line appears to develop elsewhere and later.

Irenaeus is our earliest source for a clear doctrine of AS through the bishops as a guarantee of where the Church is properly found. Scholars tend to agree that this was a teaching he himself formulated in face of the Gnostic threat. “The notion of succession,” writes Steger, “was intended to confront the Gnostic challenge and to keep pure the apostolic message. It was conceived as a warranty against the intrusion of false traditions into the legitimate apostolic tradition” (48). A similar statement is made by Laurenti Magesa, a Roman Catholic (“Basic Christian Communities and the Apostolic Succession of the Church,” in African Ecclesial Review, 26 December 1984, 350). While I respect Irenaeus and believe he has some great things to say, the notion that he has conceived of the doctrine of AS has grounding in light of another argument he makes. For example, in AH 2.22.5 he argues that Christ was nearly fifty years old at the time of his crucifixion (not in his thirties, as Luke 3:23 indicates), and that this teaching is a tradition attested and handed down by the presbyters who were in Asia with the Apostle John. Irenaeus is the only one to have ever made such a claim for Christ's age, and it is clear he does so on theological grounds in order to make the most sense out of his doctrine of recapitulation (AH 2.22.3-4). Thus we have a clear case in which Irenaeus revises history in order to make a novel theological argument.

3. Ecumenical Developments

Finally, I reject the claim that AS, classically stated, is necessary to be Church because British Baptist theologian Paul Fiddes is not just blowing smoke when he writes:

There is a general agreement growing on the ecumenical scene that apostolic succession is not in the first place about handing on a particular ministry through the laying on of hands in an unbroken chain from the earliest apostles to today. Continuity is not, in its primary manifestation, about a strict sequence of one bishop ordaining another from the early days of the church to the present. Rather, it is about the succession in faith and life of the church as a whole.

• Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 2003, 223).

Laurenti Magesa agrees, noting that AS in its most fundamental sense is the faithful preservation of apostolic tradition. Again, he is a Roman Catholic, but he argues that the present conception of AS as belonging exclusively to the hierarchy does not correspond to what we find in the NT, and that the notion developed in Asia Minor and Syria in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries to counter Gnostic heresies. Hans Küng, another Catholic, has argued AS involved the whole people of God and is inspired directly by the Spirit anew in each generation as the church renews itself in the witness of the apostles (cited in Veli-Marti Karkainnen, “Apostolicity of Free Churches: A Contradiction in Terms or an Ecumenical Breakthrough?” in European Journal of Theology 11:1, pg. 46). Raymond Brown notes that modern scholarship, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, has effectively challenged this classical notion of AS and has shown it to be a too simple picture and not universal to the experience and practice of the early Church (17). This is merely a list of Catholic voices speaking out against the necessity of AS as defining what and where Church is.

Veli-Marti Karkainnen, a Pentecostal theologian out of Fuller Seminary, notes that AS is being replaced with apostolicity in a broader, more holistic sense. “In modern discussions of the idea of apostolic succession,” he writes, “the insight has established itself that the primary issue is succession in the teaching and faith of the apostles and only secondarily is it a matter of succession in office” (43). The ecumenical document Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, put out by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (and written primarily by my systematic theology professor, Dr. Geoffrey Wainwright), defines apostolicity as continuity in the permanent characteristics of the church of the apostles:

...witness to the apostolic faith, proclamation and fresh interpretation of the Gospel, celebration of baptism and the eucharist, the transmission of ministerial responsibilities, communion in prayer, love, joy and suffering, service to the sick and the needy, unity among the local churches and sharing the gifts which the Lord has given to each.

• Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982, M34)

As Steger notes, AS as ordination in a line of continuity is more and more recognized as a sign of this greater reality – AS does not strictly define nor replace the fullness of apostolicity (55). Apostolic succession is primarily the work of the people in fulfilling the mandate to which all have been called by God and which all have taken upon themselves by their common baptism – it is faithful re-telling and re-membering of the gospel story in each generation. It is a duty not of a select hierarchy, nor incumbent upon that hierarchy's presence for validation, but it is the active confession of the whole community centered on the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Labels: Ecumenism, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, March 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

Christian universalism is a pretty vogue topic among my friends and I at Duke Divinity. The reason is quite personal: one of our number is, at least in his rhetoric, utterly convinced of the truth of this position. The topic has become especially humorous because every single class period when the subject of hell came up in the Introduction to Christian Theology class, he himself was absent. Meanwhile, after having missed church for several weeks, our friend woke up early last Sunday morning, attended Duke Chapel, and heard Dean Wells give a flat-out, no-holds barred, universalistic sermon on the hope of redemption for all people. The rest of us remain flabbergasted at our friend's apparent ability to miss class when the idea of hell comes up and then suddenly attend church when the idea of universalism is preached. The pet theory floating around in jest is that the “universalist demons” have taken possession, and when the possessed one showed up at my house for a theology final study session another friend promptly sprinkled him with water and shouted, “The power of Christ compels you!”

I didn't believe my universalist friend until I sat down myself and watched the Duke Chapel webcast on my computer – and yes, Dean Wells has outed himself as a universalist. Focusing on Malachi 3:1-4, Wells did not deny the existence of hell but saw its punishment (Greek: kolasis) as redemptive and purgative rather than retributive. That is to say, hell is not a place where one is consigned but where one is purified, so that all that is antithetical to God and his kingdom is burned away. Universalism that takes Scripture seriously does not deny hell so much as alter its duration and intended purposes.

Unlike Dean Wells and my friend, I am not a convinced universalist. But like Geoffrey Wainwright and Richard Hays, I am a hopeful universalist. I want this teaching to be true, and if the gospel has any power it should shape its adherents into a people who long for nothing less than redemption that is perfect and whole. For those who seem to glory in eternal fire I offer no better response, ultimately, than the shake of a head. Ezekiel 37 and I Timothy 2 (and I understand how the Reformed read such statements and I patently reject that as illegitimate eisegesis).

But theologically I am reaching the point where the only viable alternative to universalism would have to be a kind of fading out of existence for those who ultimately fail to enjoy redemption and its fruits. Some typically argue that enduring punishment in hell signals the defeat of God's purposes because sin and evil remain in those who undergo ongoing conscious existence separated from the joy of God's presence and the company of believers. While that point has some usefulness, I think ultimately it is outweighed by a far more explicitly biblical testimony: the passages in the New Testament that speak clearly of the uniting of all creation in Christ. Paul writes in I Corinthians 15 that everything may be made subject to Christ, who will then hand over his kingdom to the Father so that God may be “all in all.” This same Paul shares what appears to be a pre-Pauline hymn in Philippians 2 (which in turn is based on Isaiah 45) that declares every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord – and the word there for confess signals genuine praise and thanksgiving. Then among the “deutero-Pauline” letters Colossians 1 states that God through Christ will reconcile all things to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven. Finally, in Ephesians 1, the mystery of the gospel culminates not merely in the “salvation of souls” but in “anakephalaiosasthai” - that is, the gathering up or the summing up of all things “in Christ.” The phrase “in Christ” is Pauline language for new life birthed in baptism, so whatever it means to be in Christ it is not, as some might imagine, the glad thanksgiving of some and the forced subjection of others. A clear Pauline theological emphasis throughout these passages is the cosmic scope of salvation – all creation shall be reconciled to God, and everything shall be found in the closest communion possible with him.

Given this “Christo-finalization” of all creation, as Teilhard de Chardin calls it, it is difficult to conceive reading exception clauses into these statements. “Except for those in hell,” all things will be reconciled. “Except for those in hell,” God will be all in all and heaven and earth will be summed up, wrapped up, caught up in the self-giving, love-dominated life of Christ. If all creation should experience this joy of redemption, then the only way to be denied that joy, it seems, is to not be a created being anymore. This would fit the logic of certain early church fathers (such as Athanasius) on our being as a form derived from God, and in losing communion with God we in essence lose the glue that holds us together and keeps us from nonexistence.

What do I then make of the passages that invoke imagery of unending punishment? I'm not completely sure, although I would venture to say that one should read such passages, which typically come to us in the image-laden genres of parable and apocalypse, and read them in light of the more systematic and rationalistic arguments provided by Paul. It simply won't do to make up exceptions to Paul's explicit statement while selectively literalizing Revelation 20, for example.

Whatever our speculation, meanwhile, let us hold fast to our gospel mission – for Christ is Lord and whether or not everyone will gladly acknowledge him as such we are to call them to do so now, each day, and every day.

Labels: Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Saturday, December 16, 2006 | Permalink | Comments